A Summit of Significant, Selective Success:
Prospects for the Brisbane G20

John Kirton

RDCY

11/03/2015

The Challenge

The ninth Group of Twenty (G20) summit, taking place in Brisbane, Australia on November 15-
16, 2014, is an unusually significant event. It comes with the unprecedented geopolitical drama
and risks arising from Russia’s forceful annexation of Crimea, its subsequent military incursions
in eastern Ukraine, and the question of whether President Putin will actually attend the summit
and how he will be treated there if he does. It also faces a severe security threat from the brutal
terrorism of the self-proclaimed Islamic State (ISIL) now expanding through Syria and Iraq and the
deadly Ebola epidemic devastating the lives and economic fortunes of West Africa and infecting
Europe and the United States. G20 leaders further face the need to shape the global development
and climate agenda, to give the needed impetus to the great multilateral summits taking place in
2015 to complete the old and launch the new Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and to
define a new legally binding climate change control regime.

At the same time, G20 leaders, confronting a slowing, struggling global economy, need to deliver
the G20’s centrepiece promise for the Brisbane summit of raising growth 2% above trend over
the following five years. They also have a formidable, carefully constructed full scale economic
agenda, focused on the Australian host’s priorities of creating growth and jobs, stronger financial
regulation, tax fairness, freer trade and infrastructure finance, along with anti-corruption, money
laundering, and terrorist finance.

To deal with these tasks, Australia’s first G20 summit as host will be chaired by Prime Minister
Tony Abbott, attending his first G20 summit, backed by just over a year’s experience as Australia’s
leader and standing at a relatively low approval rating in the polls. He will be joined as a newcomer
by Indonesia’s Joko Widodo, India’s Narendra Modi, Italy’s Matteo Renzi and Turkey’s Ahmet
Davutoglu (who is due to host the 2015 summit), and the recent arrivals of China’s Xi Jinping,
Korea’s Park Geun-hye and Mexico’s Enrique Pena Nieto. Coming with more experience are
Russia’s Vladimir Putin, who hosted the previous G20 summit in St. Petersburg in September 2013,
Brazil’s Dilma Rousseff, France’s François Hollande and the United Kingdom’s David Cameron,
the US’s Barack Obama and South Africa’s Jacob Zuma. Arriving as G20 summit founders who
have attended every one are Canada’s Stephen Harper, Germany’s Angela Merkel and Argentina’s
Cristina Kirchner. At their side as fellow G20 members will be the two new leaders of the European
Union, Christine Lagarde of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Jim Yong Kim of the
World Bank. Their task is to meet, build upon and exceed the growing performance of eight G8
summits held since their start in November 2008 amidst the global financial crisis erupting then...